Saturday, 23 May 2009

Today it was hot in St Jean de Luz. Very hot. After spending most of the day melting on our rear terrace I escaped the heat for a drive in the mountains. With the roof down I sang loudly the various bits of Basque music I had managed to memorise. I was en route to my now weekly session with our choir mistress and the practice was necessary. Today we covered an additional three songs. There is much to work on.

This evening there was the first ever festival of four cultures in Ciboure. Our friend Francois-Xavier was dancing flamenco and we figured we'd go support him, catch up with other friends and have a generally fab time. We weren't wrong. The event took place under a large part open sided tent erected on the banks of the port looking out to the sun setting over the Basque Sea. After a more formal start to the evening a local Basque band took to the stage and orchestrated group dances, in much the same way as I had seen callers call ceilidhs in the past. We were both soon swept up in the throng and mimicking the others around us with some effect. Some were surprisingly similar to Scottish dances. Following several lengthy passages of movement we decided to escape, we have much ahead of us. Fireworks lit our way home, exposing a private dinner that was going on in one of the fisheries. Tonight has been a wonderful appetiser for the festival next weekend. There are so many excuses to party down here I am almost, but not quite, ashamed.

Basque Bylines

Traversing the planet is always good for the soul but so is returning home. Following ten months in Outer Mongolia a Scotsman and his wife return from the Steppe. Back in St Jean de Luz the sun still sits high in the sky, Gateau Basque remains as tempting as ever and life in the Basque Country moves forever onwards at its own luxurious pace. Having answered one important question, one remains:

What makes gateau Basque taste so good?

[What made Chinggis Khaan so darned angry? Nothing rhymed with his name which as a budding poet grated heavily and have you ever tried to run the world's greatest ever empire from a ger on the remote Steppe surrounded by camels at -40C?]